The twice reflected Moon light

"Think about the journeys of all those photons that make up this picture: some came straight from the Sun, a trip of 150 million kilometers, only to be scattered away at the last moment; some redder ones made it all the way through; some hit the moon and came toward us but were bent a bit by Earth’s air, distorting the Moon’s face; and others still came from the Sun, hit us, went to the Moon, hit there, came back to us, finally making it into the lens of a camera held by a man hanging in the cupola of a football-field-sized metal can orbiting 350 kilometers above our planet at 30,000 kilometers per hour."

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/11/19/the-twice-reflected-moon-light

Man & the Moon

"This is a short film about our mysterious relationship with the moon and the constant endeavours to unravel the enigmas that surround it."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5gFikJeNPg

www.thebookofthemoon.com

How to build a time machine

"Nothing is flat or solid. If you look closely enough at anything you'll find holes and wrinkles in it. It's a basic physical principle, and it even applies to time. Even something as smooth as a pool ball has tiny crevices, wrinkles and voids. Now it's easy to show that this is true in the first three dimensions. But trust me, it's also true of the fourth dimension. There are tiny crevices, wrinkles and voids in time. Down at the smallest of scales, smaller even than molecules, smaller than atoms, we get to a place called the quantum foam. This is where wormholes exist. Tiny tunnels or shortcuts through space and time constantly form, disappear, and reform within this quantum world. And they actually link two separate places and two different times."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1269288/STEPHEN-HAWKING-How-build-time-machine.html

Space yacht will be first craft to travel on 'solar waves' as it sets sail for Venus

"The square shaped sail is equipped with thin-film solar cells and will use resistance created by the Sun's energy in much the same way as wind propels a yacht through water. This will provide it with enough thrust to hover and rotate.

'It is a hybrid technology of electricity and pressure', Japanese Space Agency expert Yuichi Tsuda said."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1269478/Space-yacht-craft-travel-solar-waves-sets-sail-Venus.html

Spacelog - Read the stories of early space exploration

"In fifty years since mankind began to explore in person the universe outside our home planet, there have been many memorable moments, of beauty, of bravery, and occasionally of tragedy. For those who did not live through them it is sometimes difficult to appreciate the excitement of these early flights. Spacelog aims to bring those missions back to life: a website for exploring manned space missions through transcripts of conversations from during the flights between those in space and those back on the ground, and from photography taken at the time. "

http://spacelog.org/

Solar System Scale Model

"Solar System Scale Model [phrenopolis.com] shows a scale model of the solar system. The planets are displayed in a scale corresponding to the first image, which is that of the sun. Unlike most solar system visualizations or models, the planets are shown at their true-to-scale average distances from the Sun."


http://infosthetics.com/archives/2009/11/solar_system_scale_model.html


http://www.phrenopolis.com/perspective/solarsystem/

Going beyond our solar system

"They are of similar size to Jupiter but in much closer orbits around their parent stars. Each has a temperature of approximately 10,000 degrees Centigrade. They must therefore be extremely inhospitable to any known form of life. WASP-12 is 475 light-years from Earth, while HAT-P-20 is 230 light-years away.

Chris Fuller said "I was amazed that we could detect distant planets orbiting other stars from a telescope in the middle of Cardiff." Jon Rees added: "It is remarkable to be able to see distant worlds and work out what conditions must be like there.""

http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/articles/going-beyond-our-solar-system-6613.html

Christmas Vanguard

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiml42/5290553341/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LChyLuhiex4

NASA Announces Results of Epic Space-Time Experiment

"The space-time around Earth appears to be distorted just as general relativity predicts," says Stanford University physicist Francis Everitt, principal investigator of the Gravity Probe B mission.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04may_epic/


http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/16nov_gpb/

In the event of moon disaster

"Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by the nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown. [...]"

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/11/in-event-of-moon-disaster.html

Interactiuve 3D Model of the Solar System

" The Model consists of 3 main Views (Heliocentric, Geocentric and Panaromatic), including: Precise Positions of all Celestial Objects according to NASA Calculations, Schematic Distances and Sizes for better understanding of Planet Surfaces and Motions, a unique feature to Drag Planets through their Orbits, a lot of interesting Settings which allow you to Observe particular Motions and Events, Distance Calculator to measure distances between Planets even while in motion, Earth Observatory set-up with which you can watch Celestial Happenings on your Night Sky"

http://www.solarsystemscope.com/

Forget the Green Lantern: here’s the Green Flash

"The Earth’s atmosphere acts like a lens, bending light. Near the horizon this bending effect can be quite large, distorting objects when they rise or set (I explain this in detail in this post showing a similar picture of the squished Moon). Different wavelengths of light are bent by different amounts, so in extreme cases the colors from an object can be separated out, like the way a prism separates colors. "

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/05/03/forget-the-green-lantern-heres-the-green-flash/

Best Mars Images From Orbiter’s First 5 Years

"Since settling into orbit around the Red Planet on March 10, 2006, MRO has transmitted more data to Earth -- 131 trillion bits and more than 70,000 images so far -- than all other interplanetary missions combined.

After the orbiter finished all its initial science objectives in the first two years, NASA extended its lifetime twice. The extra time let MRO watch Mars change over two-and-a-half Martian years, giving a new picture of a shifting, dynamic planet."

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/happy-birthday-mro/

Unfolding PTV array

"finally got round to rendering this properly, so you can see the panels heat up, as well as the holographic lights on the tips of the panels. I didn't think too much about timing when I was setting up this animation, so it's pretty terrible and unrealistic. The one thing I had carefully got right was the rotation of the grav-pods, but then I decided to slow it all down by a factor of 2, so they're not right any more either, unless you're happy with 0.5g."

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiml42/5896180504/in/pool-58012235@N00/

WorldWide Telescope brings stargazing online

"The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a Web 2.0 visualization software  environment that enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope--bringing together imagery from the world's best ground- and space-based telescopes for the exploration of the universe."

http://www.techrepublic.com/photos/worldwide-telescope-brings-stargazing-online/6192247

Send your name to Mars

Send Your Name to Mars - Closes June 13, 2011


http://marsparticipate.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/participate/sendyourname/

Voyager Golden Record

http://www.goldenrecord.org/

Grand Tour of the Known Universe

"The movie titled "Known Universe" takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world's most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History."

http://infosthetics.com/archives/2009/12/grand_tour_of_the_known_universe.html

Voyager 2 Speaking in Code

"NASA may have to bust out an Enigma Machine to figure out what's going on with the Voyager 2 probe, the second most distant human-made object in space.

Yesterday mission managers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena announced that the craft recently started sending back science data in a format no one on Earth can decode. "

http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/news/breakingorbit/2010/05/voyager-2-speaking-in-code.html

Chromoscope - View the Universe in Different Wavelengths

View the universe in different wavelengths

"Chromoscope has been created using public-domain datasets from a number of all-sky astronomy projects. It lets you easily move around the sky and fade between wavelengths using a simple user-interface to illustrate the similarities and differences between what is visible at each wavelength."


http://www.chromoscope.net/